Nathaniel Hawthorne

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how Nathaniel Hawthorne was an Eighteenth-century American author who, through his works, explored the subject of human sin, punishment, and guilt. It examines how themes of pride, guilt, sin, punishment, and evil are evident in all of his works and how the wrongs committed by his ancestors play a particularly dominant force in Hawthorne's literary career, including in his most famous piece, "The Scarlet Letter."

From the Paper:

"Regarding his workroom, Hawthorne once wrote, "This deserves to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands and thousands of visions have appeared to me in it" (Nathaniel Pp). He was one of the first American writers to explore the hidden motivations of his characters, such as in the "Scarlet Letter," a story describing the early victims of Puritan obsession with spiritual ferocity and the effect of guilt, anxiety and sorrow as its central theme (Nathaniel Pp). "The House of the Seven Gables" focused on a family that has inherited a curse by one of the victims of the Seventeenth Century Salem witchcraft trials (Nathaniel Pp). Hawthorne based this story on the legend of a curse that was pronounced upon his own family by a woman who was condemned to death during the Salem trials (Nathaniel Pp)."

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